Protecting Creator’s Rights
July 26th, 2008My film of the week is Good Copy Bad Copy, a documentary about sampling in music and legal notions of intellectual property. If you are a musician or a lover of new music, this is a must watch.
I’ll be honest, it was my 3rd time watching the movie before I caught the irony of this statement by Dan Glickman, the chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (at about 13 minutes).
“In the U.S. Constitution there’s only one substantive area of law included and that was protecting creator’s rights. The founding fathers said that would be determinative of how successful a country you have.”
Of course he means protecting “copyright holders’ rights”. But take a spin on the exact words, and they could be used to defend artists who use sampling. Surely, Girl Talk is creating something new in his music.
Girl Talk drives home the point (at 54 mins):
You hear songs on the radio with riffs that sound just like Black Sabbath, more so than me cutting up Bachman-Turner Overdrive will sound like Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I can manipulate these sources more than people ripping off chord progressions. It’s just different musical tools.
Owning an idea. That’s a sloppery slip™.
Posted in Mu$ic Theory | Comments (1)
July 26th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I love the Pirate Bay guys, they are my heroes (around 16:50). They have a simple message, you cannot police the world based on your country’s laws, and they do everything they can to mock and ridicule those who try. Vote Pirate Party!